He's a head case, I suggest, and he replies, "In a nice way," his desire to make others happy a lifelong way of life.

He says that when LeBron James won the championship he cried, thrilled for LeBron and upset he wasn't playing.

When Orlando lost to the Lakers in the 2009 Finals, he says he cried himself to sleep listening to Eminem sing about getting only one shot in "Lose Yourself."

He says he recently saw the new Tom Cruise movie, "Jack Reacher," and when some people were killed, he nearly cried.

He cries a lot.

"I'm emotional," he says.

He smiles a lot too.

"My mother had seven miscarriages before I came along," he says, his mother calling him the Miracle Baby. "I'm not supposed to be here; I have a reason to be happy."

He sang in the choir, was co-president of his high school class and comes from a protective family. Mom and dad still offer advice, and a cousin has been traveling with him since he went pro.

He remembers as a kid his dad asking him why he seemed to be the only basketball player smiling. Then his dad started to watch him play more, his teams losing and at the same time lacking energy. He noticed his son taking the losses hard and also lacking energy.

"Keep smiling," his dad told him, and so Howard does, although it's often misinterpreted.

"People don't know what I'm doing behind the scenes to get better," he says. "They think I'm just a screw-up. But because I smile doesn't mean I want to win any less than Kobe, who might not smile."

He says as easygoing as he might appear, there is something else brewing inside that needs to be contained.

"A lot of people don't know that I used to work out with Kevin Garnett when I first came into the league. Later I would play against him the year we were going to the Finals, and he did everything to get into my head and disrupt my game. And it worked.

"I learned from that; I learned I'm going to get fouled and bumped," he says. Yet a few days ago in a loss to Utah, it's as if he needs another lesson.

"I did have bad body language," he says. "I got a number of texts from my friends saying that's not me. I was out of it. I missed a couple of shots and let it get to me."

He thinks about things all the time. He recently shut down his personality when quizzed by an Orlando reporter he believes betrayed him earlier. As tough as he wants to be, he has to overcome his own sensitivity, challenging himself on the ride home for how he handled the reporter.

"People don't know how hurt I've been, and sometimes I allow it to show," he says.

He wants to talk more about Orlando, but what do we care? He's a Laker now. But he won't stop talking.

"People don't understand," he says. "Yeah, I'm this big guy, but I also have a big heart. All I wanted to do was put Orlando on the map, but then I see all this stuff being written; I had to stop reading Twitter and doing Facebook. It was bad for my soul.

"I told a friend I was going to come back this year and not fool with anybody, stay to myself and not do anything else. But who am I kidding? That's not me."

To remind himself how important it is to keep the game fun, he watched 40 clips of himself going sour in Orlando.

"We're lucky to do what we do," he says.

He says he left Orlando because everyone from the owner to the janitor has to believe a team can win a championship. That wasn't happening in Orlando, he says.

He says he watched LeBron leave Cleveland and knew what was coming. "I saw people burning his jersey and I'm thinking I don't want to hurt these people like that. But at the same time I had everyone telling me what I should do.

"And here I am shouting for God to help me, knowing the teacher sometimes remains quiet. I guess it was a test."

Once he made his decision to leave Orlando, it was going to be the best of times. But instead he finds himself parked in hell.

"Maybe somewhere between heaven and hell," he says. "Purgatory. But it's going to get better. I know it."